Circles
Effective 4 June 2026
Circles is a personal relationship manager that helps you stay in touch with the people who matter. This policy explains what the app does — and does not — do with your information. The short version: your data stays on your device.
All of your content — the contacts you import, the circles you create, your call history within the app, notes, and preferences — is stored locally on your device in a private database. We do not operate a server or account system, and none of this information is transmitted to us. The one exception is the optional iCloud backup described below, which you turn on yourself and which stays inside your own iCloud account — never ours.
With your permission, Circles reads your device's address book so you can organize the people you already know into circles. Contact details are used only on your device to power the app's features and are never uploaded off your device. You can revoke contacts access at any time in your device's Settings.
When you tap to call someone, Circles opens your phone's dialer using a
standard tel: link. The app records that you initiated a call
(the time and the person) locally so it can show your
relationship rhythm over time. Circles cannot and does not read your phone's
system call log, listen to calls, or access call content.
Circles offers a free trial followed by a one-time purchase to unlock the app. Purchases are processed by Apple and managed through RevenueCat, which handles purchase receipts and entitlement status on our behalf. This process does not involve your contacts or any of the content you store in the app. RevenueCat may process an anonymous app-user identifier and purchase information solely to validate your unlock and restore it across reinstalls. See Apple's and RevenueCat's privacy policies for details on how they handle purchase data.
Circles does not include third-party advertising, and does not track you across other apps or websites.
Circles is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.
Because your data lives only on your device, deleting the app would normally erase it. To prevent that, Circles offers an optional iCloud backup that you can turn on in Settings. It is off by default.
When enabled, the app saves a snapshot of your database to your own private iCloud storage — the same iCloud account you use on your device — so your circles, contacts, and call history can be restored if you reinstall the app. This snapshot is stored in an app-private iCloud container managed by Apple on your behalf. It is never sent to us or to any third party, and we cannot access it. You can turn the backup off at any time in Settings; how iCloud itself stores the data is governed by Apple's privacy policy.
The app lets you export a backup of your database to a file and share or store it wherever you choose. Once you export and share a backup, how that file is stored is governed by the service or location you send it to, not by Circles.
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new effective date.
Questions about privacy? Email aalhamad8@gmail.com.